“I voted for Leo, twice. I really like him”

Disclaimer: This is just a train of thought.

Those aren’t my words.

It’s one of those weekday nights in Surulere where you’re too lazy to cook. So you just step out of your house, cross a busy street, and buy rice. It’s one of those one-table-can-make-a-restaurant stands by the road, just a few inches from the gutter. 3 big coolers; one for Jollof; one for Fried; one for White. 3 small coolers; one for stew, one for Plantain, one for Beans.

If you pass in the morning, there’ll be no sign of this stand, because this business is for people who come home late from work like me; too tired to cook. If I had to name this stand, I’d call it “Come to me, all ye who are burdened and weary…” and I’ll give you rice.

Relax. I just made this map shit up.

I voted for Leo, twice. I really like him.

Again, those aren’t my words. They aren’t the actual words in fact.

“Mo like Leo gan. Mo vote fun lemmeji.”

It’s not the main Rice Mama that said it. It’s one of her assistants, and I can’t tell if it’s Rice Mama’s daughter or worker. What I know for sure is how passionately she spoke about him to some guy who insisted Tobi was his fave. The Yoruba is so easy on her tongue.

This is Leo, a now evicted housemate from the Big Brother Naija House;

The Love of Rice Mama’s Girl’s life.

And there was Rice Mama’s girl, rooting for this guy at the time, hoping that her long distance crush wins the money.

We’ll come back to Rice Mama’s girl, let’s take a quick contextual break.

How did Big Brother Naija become such a movement?

We’re going deeper, into another layer of context. And this one is taking us to Nigerian concerts. Just pretend this is Inception.

Many Nigerian concerts are too poorly designed. Take this one for example;

I can’t come and pay for table and still come and kill myself.

They charge a lot of money for VVIP and make them sit so close to the stage as reward. Thing is, the average Nigerian VVIP can’t shout. The Regulars will most likely be in one corner, shouting their lungs out at celebrities who can’t see them because they’re blinded by the spotlight.

But see what happens when you make the stage more accessible to the about-average Jane and Joe, this happens:

Let’s climb back up to how Big Brother Naija became a movement. Rewind to 2017, when thousands, or maybe millions of people were willing to die on the line for Efe.

#TeamEfe, in Jos.

I have a theory: maybe Big Brother Naija was such a force because it had become more accessible. DSTV used to be a luxury item. It probably still is to a lot of people, so that’s why Multichoice thought it’d be great to have a cheaper, mass-market alternative, GoTV. Maybe it’s also interesting to note that, some Big Brother action was available for GoTV users for the first time in 2017. Maybe the party pops more when more people are closer to the stage.

Back to Rice Mama’s girl. She voted twice, at 30 naira per vote. She probably would have voted more on Big Brother’s web page if the internet was less expensive or puzzling maybe. (It’s in italic because I might be overreaching).

“Nigerians won’t pay for shit,”

Said the cool people on the Internet, who want Nigerians to pay for things they have little interest in, nor understanding of. They’re probably right to a certain degree.

Rice Mama’s girl is proof, if you ask me, that Nigerians can pay for content, as long as they find some value in it. So, will they pay say, 50 naira monthly by USSD, if it will give them access to some exclusive content they would normally not have access to?

I don’t know.

What I know is that someone paid 60 naira to keep her favourite person in the house. To keep content she considered valuable. To subscribe.

So, what’s the problem with paid content in Nigeria for example, is it the price or the method of payment?

Or are we just generally looking in the wrong places, from the comfort of our bubble? I want answers.

I hope you weren’t expecting any conclusions. I really hope you weren’t. Because this is how it ends.

Okay, a second thought.

I’d like to talk about this Content thing. This part might be totally unrelated to everything before this.

I have a theory, that when you create something you find interesting, it could be called art, where you’re first of all creating, as a means of expression. But when you create, putting into consideration the behaviour of a potential audience, hoping they consume, that’s Content.

The real magic, the hard part, is when you can create truly great work, and still appeal to an audience.

So you run into people who create some stuff, blaming the audience for not consuming what they create, missing out the most important ingredient here; Empathy.

Empathy is understanding that your audience will probably check out within the first 5 seconds of your video if you have no clear plan to keep them. It is knowing that your website might have really great stuff, but is costing your audience — who’s probably managing a small data plan — a lot, simply because it’s taking too much data. The guys at Opera Mini know this.

Over 26 million people voted in the final week of the Big Brother Naija 2017. I wonder how many of those votes happened by text because opening a website with horrible Internet is just stress.

Empathy makes all the difference.

P.S: Here’s one more empathy game we should play. I want you to remember again, that this is a train of thought that completely went out of control, and share what you think. You know, add your wagon to this train.